**************** UPDATES**************Please see our updates - just click the update button to the right of 'story' and they will all come into view.******************************************

· Did you know that there is evidence of fraud in many American elections?

· And that several presidents, Republican and Democratic, have "won" because of fraud?

· Did you know that there is now something that Americans can do to fix this?

My name is Daniel Wolf. I founded Democracy Counts, a nonprofit tech startup in San Diego, California.

Many of America's election systems are so weak from a security point of view that it is easily possible to rig the presidential election in key swing states. It is fair to say that President Trump could win reelection in 2020 because of election rigging and voter suppression in those states.

We now have a way to guarantee accurate elections -- so that whoever wins we know it was a legitimate victory.

Democracy Counts has developed tools that empower regular people, using their mobile devices, to conduct same-day election audits. These generate CPA-quality data that expose errors and fraud, preserve evidence against destruction, and undermine voter suppression and gerrymandering.

If our system had been in Ohio in 2004, it would have exposed the man-in-the-middle attack that gave W the Electoral College. In 2016 it would have undermined trump’s victories in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan. In past elections, such as in 1960, when JFK was put over the line by fraud in Texas and Chicago, our system would have exposed those.

Here are the three core audit tools, in increasing order of difficulty.

Using the Polling Place Data Preservation App people take photos of polling place results. They are encrypted and uploaded to our secure servers. The data on the photos is then compared with the posted results.

The Voter Suppression App counts how many voters were suppressed and how. It definitively establishes constitutional injury and probable effect on election outcomes. It represents a new avenue of attack on unfair voter I.D. laws.

With the Parallel Vote App voters entering polling places are asked to vote again on our system. They sign in and sign an affidavit saying that they are voting the same way as they voted inside. Then they vote anonymously. High participation rates will make it very difficult to hide rigging, irrespective of type of ballot or voting machine.

Our data can be used to challenge suspicious elections and demand law enforcement investigations. This will empower reform efforts. Gerrymandering that depends on voter suppression and fraud to protect against high voter turnout will become vulnerable.

Our goal for 2020 is to have audits in all the swing states.

The days of discovering too late that the losing candidate was illegitimately declared the winner, and the error cannot be undone, are over.

In 1787, as the Constitutional Convention was wrapping up, a woman asked Benjamin Franklin “What have you given us, a republic or a monarchy?”

He responded "A republic, if you can keep it."

Will you help us keep it? Please donate today. Make it a recurring donation if you can.

***- Who we are -

Democracy Counts!, Inc., is a nonprofit, nonpartisan tech startup founded in 2015. Our mission is to bring effective new tools, technologies, and possibilities to Americans working to fix our vulnerable election systems.

Fair elections are the foundation of a democracy: They are citizens' final tool to hold their leaders accountable. Without fair elections, accurately counted, we all lose, in the long term if not in the short. The tools we are developing, therefore, are for all Americans, irrespective of their political coloration.

- How you can help! -

You can help us succeed, and help American democracy become great again, with your donations certainly, but also via word-of-mouth. Here is a list of ways to help:

·Make a donation - today if you can - we're working on getting audits going in the swing states in 2020. · If you know anyone in the media, please ask them to consider doing a story; · If you know any influencers in politics, government, entertainment or the professions, please share what we are doing with them; we need endorsements and introductions; · Invite Democracy Counts to give a talk to your civic group; and · Consider becoming a Citizen Auditor or even joining our team.

- What we need and how we will use your donation -

We are embarking on an outreach strategy to stir up buzz among those who are directly injured by fraud and suppression: politicians and political parties. If we can convince them that our system and our goal of auditing the swing states in 2020 is credible, then we can leverage to raise funds and start reaching out credibly to civil society groups in the swing states.

We are asking for the support of Americans who understand that it comes down to us.

- What Democracy Counts! brings to the table -

We must eliminate even the suspicion of election error and fraud. Unfortunately there are only two ways to definitively detect them: Investigate from the inside, or put an independent check on the data from the outside. The former is barred by government secrecy and judicial resistance to grants of legal discovery. This leaves the latter as Americans’ only course of action.

Our election audit system gives Americans that independent check.

In addition to verifying vote counts our system contains a powerful new tool for use against voter suppression, including suppression operating under color of law, such as voter I.D. laws that go well beyond reasonable identification requirements. Our audit results will arm attorneys for voting-rights organizations with hard data. They will use this data to

· Challenge elections whose results depended on suppression,· Reverse the laws through court challenges, hopefully developing case law sufficient to· Establish the right to vote in the U.S. Constitution (which does not mention or protect voting).

- Democracy Counts’ longer-term goals -

Our 2020 goal is truly audacious: To organize audits in every battleground state in order to deter or expose any errors that might lead to an illegitimate result in the presidential and Congressional elections. Our audit in Broward County last November has given us the knowledge we need to start organizing these audits.

Our long-term goal is to make citizen audits so commonplace and ubiquitous that all legislatures -- even the foot-draggers -- will institute reforms guaranteeing transparency and verifiability. Possible reforms include paper ballots with counting overseen by alert citizens, independent risk-limiting audits, open-source computer code, etc. At that point our citizen audits would become unnecessary, except perhaps as spot-checks.

The funds during this period will be used for travel to make presentations to politicians, party officials, state officials, and high-net-worth individuals with an interest in fixing our elections.

- A final note -

This is an ambitious multi-pronged approach. It is a lot of work to implement, for us and for citizen auditors around the country. But if not us, who? And if not now, when? And isn’t it worth the work to work to save our country’s democratic system?

We certainly think it is. And we hope that you think so too.

- The Democracy Counts team -

For more information on our team see their bios at www.democracycounts.org

- Contact us -

For more information visit our website at www.democracycounts.org.

***What follows is a deeper dive into the details of the audit system . . . .

- What is our same-day election audit system and how does it work? -

It is a set of secure auditing tools that allow citizen auditors to collect data in apps on their smartphones and tablets. These tools:

· Count the votes in parallel with official polling places · Preserve polling place and other official data · Quantify voter suppression, and · Track reports of illegal political behaviors

On election night our analytics teams compare official results against our data. Discrepancies are flagged for closer review. Evidence pointing to serious error or fraud is then provided to lawyers for candidates and civic organizations who may have been injured by the errors. They then have the evidence with which to challenge the elections in court and to demand investigations into the causes of the discrepancies.

- The importance of these real-time election-audit tools -

Election integrity activists have been hamstrung when attempting to probe suspected election fraud. Courts have required that they provide direct evidence of fraud before they will allow legal discovery into the actions that officials took that led to the suspicious election outcomes.

Because any evidence of possible fraud is hidden within the official systems, this requirement sets up a Catch-22: Show me what you can’t obtain and then I’ll let you look for it.

Similarly, when challenging voter suppression, federal courts have insisted that a very large number of suppressed voters come forward as plaintiffs, and that they show that the cumulative effects of being denied their right to vote was sufficient to affect the elections they were prevented from voting in.

The only evidence lawyers can show, however, is not direct and irrefutable. Instead it is anecdotal, statistical and speculative, not to mention too late to stop the certification of any questionable elections. The result? They can’t get real legal traction attacking voter suppression laws.

Data produced by citizens using our audit tools give attorneys the evidence they need to break the Catch-22, so they can

· Clearly document vote-counting discrepancies that officials must explain· Demand law enforcement investigations when explanations are inadequate· Show clear Constitutional injury to large numbers of suppressed voters· Show that the votes of those injured voters might have changed outcomes had they been permitted to vote

These are important new abilities. They empower regular citizens to independently gather the data needed to push election cleanup forward. And they may be the key to the success of the New Voting Rights Movement.

- Who can conduct a citizen election audit? -

Anyone, anywhere, anytime - irrespective of political orientation - can use these tools. If you can organize a birthday party or a pickup football game you have the ability to build an audit team to hold your polling place accountable.

Using our tools, as a Citizen Auditor you can expose election errors and fraud in time to challenge an election in court before the vote is certified, so a full investigation can be performed before an incorrect winner can be declared.

If your local system is free of error or fraud, then your audit will legitimize it and help keep it clean.

- Our Future Plans -

By publicly establishing what is, with solid, non-speculative data resulting in thorough investigations, our system will empower the new voting rights movement to push back against the efforts of political machines to deprive Americans of the right to choose their leaders and their governments. Enough repeated lawsuits over a period of years will generate pro-voter case law and provoke legislative reforms improving election integrity.

And Democracy Counts will not stop at helping Americans secure the vote. We will make the software available to election integrity activists worldwide and help establish an International Federation of Election Auditors to assist and protect Citizen Auditors, who can face life-threatening consequences doing this work.